


Open Yourself up to Disappointment

by versayce



Series: Barry and Arthur Make Sex and Jokes [3]
Category: Justice League (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:43:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versayce/pseuds/versayce
Summary: “Yeah, you know, I’m giving him some space,” Barry said, wrinkling his nose as though the very idea was distasteful to him. Which it was. “I don’t want to keep following him around like a creep who can’t take a hint, in case he’s not interested.”"Not―” Vic started, then had to stop to take a deep calming breath. “Barry, he’s been banging you so hard that everyone within a half-mile radius of you two is constantly high on second-hand oxytocin.”The thrilling conclusion to the whole ordeal, in which Barry is plagued by some Feelings, Vic dispenses more sage advice than is probably favourable for his own mental health, Arthur fails to make a good first impression, and someone named Karen acts a jerk (quelle surprise, am I right? Ugh, Karens are the worst).





	Open Yourself up to Disappointment

**Author's Note:**

> I finally admitted to myself that I was writing a series - check out the two previous installments: [Angry Merman and The Accidents](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860319) and [Provenance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12898506) \- when someone said in a comment, _"maybe the boys should talk about stuff sometime instead of just fucking it out"_. And you know what? I had that very same thought! So here it is, the (probably final) one about _feelings_. As you can imagine, it's not as funny or dirty as the previous two, but at least I didn't make Barry cry (oh no wait I did, but in a sex way, not a sad way). Enjoy!

“—so then the jerk from accounting snuck in when we weren’t around and took the files, after all the effort we went through to find them, but Vic figured out where he stashed them so we got them back, and Arthur, uh, reported him to HR. So he won’t be bothering anyone for a while. My boss locked the files away somewhere safe, and then we all had some insanely delicious gazpacho for lunch. Well, except Vic. He’s got some pretty strong opinions about cold soup.”

Barry barely paused for breath, trying to cram as much quality content as possible into the few minutes he had with his dad that week.

He wasn’t going to waste any time actually talking about the crime lab – so far, all he did there was enter case file information into a database so clunky that it gave him coding stress dreams – so he found ways around Bruce’s non-disclosure rules in regards to Justice League business by tweaking the events and recasting the characters into mundane crime lab counterparts: Vic and Arthur became coworkers, and in this particular instance the jerk from accounting was some evil wizard half-brother of Arthur’s who crawled out of the ocean one Wednesday morning looking for ancient Atlantean artifacts called the Zodiac Crystals (‘the files’). The wizard bastard tore apart nearly a mile of Andalusian coast looking for the stones before they shut him down. Arthur reporting the ‘accounting jerk’ to HR was, in fact, Arthur kicking the shit out of his half-brother (with some help from the rest of the team, even though he insisted they stay out of it because it was between him and ‘the fishfucker’). Clark (‘the boss’ in this scenario, though Diana and Bruce featured in the role just as often) returned the crystals to their secret hiding spots, and then they all did actually have some insanely delicious gazpacho for lunch. The gazpacho wasn’t code for anything, since as far as Barry knew, mentioning the League’s gastronomic adventures wasn’t strictly verboten.

“Cold soup – who woulda thought?” Barry said, salivating just a little at the memory.

His dad smiled behind the glass. “Sneak some in for me next time. The cooks in here only got as far as chicken noodle and half the time even that tastes more like toilet water.”

“Sorry, I didn’t think―”

“Hey, come on, it’s just a little jailhouse humour,” his dad said, leaning closer to catch Barry’s averted gaze. “Sounds like things are working out for you at the lab. You’re working hard, maybe making some friends?”

“Yeah,” Barry said. “I guess. Sort of.”

“Doesn’t sound like a ‘sort of’ situation,” his dad corrected. “You talk about them all the time.”

“Well, Vic’s pretty awesome, so obviously I’m going to talk about him. You think I’m smart? Just wait till you meet this guy. He’s like a techno-genius with a brain full of math who gets how important Adventure Time is, but he’s terrifyingly well-informed too and he understands how sports work. What’s he even bad at? I honestly can’t think of anything. Maybe crocheting? So at least I got that. Better at crocheting than Vic.”

“And I’ve got the scarves to prove it,” his dad said. Barry beamed. “What about that Arthur guy?”

“Oh, Arthur,” Barry said with a shrug. “I’m pretty much in love with him.”

His dad laughed, and Barry realized, oh shit, not pretty much, but definitely. One hundred percent, totally and categorically, desperately, hopelessly, like a thousand burning suns inside his chest. With sudden unwelcome clarity, sitting in a too-air-conditioned prison visiting room that smelled like bleach and stale cigarettes, Barry understood he was in love.

"Hey, you good?" his dad asked, and it took everything Barry had to muster up the lying 'yup' he offered in reply.

***

“We’re all out of bread, I'm eating the last slice,” Barry sang to the tune of ‘All Out of Love’, arranging a cut up banana onto a slice of toast slathered with Nutella. “I know that it’s wrong, but I was so hungry. We’re all out of bread, what baked good will―”

Vic walked into the kitchen just as Barry was really getting the hang of holding a note for longer than a fraction of a second. He looked like he wanted to walk right back out, but he also looked thirsty. Did he need to drink anymore? Barry wasn’t sure, but he felt that it was kind of a rude thing to ask someone who’d lost most of their body and a parent to a tragic accident and had a magic space-box graft machinery onto their innards (and outtards – which wasn’t a word but maybe should be). Asking a cyborg about their digestive system seemed bad in the same way that asking a trans person about their genitals was bad. Barry decided against it.

Vic grabbed a glass of water, maybe for thirst-quenching reasons or maybe not – Barry would ever know – and said, after taking a careful sip, “Arthur’s been gone less than a week and you’re already busting out the Air Supply in despair?”

Barry scoffed, then decided a second layer of Nutella, on top of the banana, was in order. “What despair? I’m just singing to the bread,” he corrected.

“That’s not better, man.”

“You’re one to judge. I hear you talking to the Flying Fox controls like the plane’s a pretty lady or a wild horse all the time. ‘Be good for me, baby,’ and ‘that’s it, easy now,’ and stuff. It’s sort of intensely weird.”

A little light began to blink at an alarmingly rapid rate on Vic’s chestplate. Barry stopped talking on the off-chance it was a blood pressure indicator or something, heralding the onset of an involuntary yet violent reflexive response from Vic’s robo-parts to being super annoyed. The banana-and-Nutella toast needed more Nutella anyway.

A moment later, Vic said, “I could track him for you. Figure out where this secret mission of Bruce’s took them and when they’ll be back.”

Barry shook his head. “Nah, you know he hates it when you keep tabs on him. And what’s the big deal about him being gone a few days? It’s not like I’m―”

Downstairs, the grand main doors of the Hall of Justice slammed so hard that the custom-made stained glass rattled in the frame. At least it didn’t break. An object of some kind was thrown at a wall with considerable force, footsteps thundered down a hall and up some stairs, and Bruce shouted something that sounded suspiciously like ‘go fuck yourself’. Could have been ‘unpack your stuff’ or ‘go take a bath’, but Barry wouldn’t put any money on either of those possibilities.

“Anyway,” Barry said, and took a casual, apathetic bite of his toast, as though what was going on downstairs was of no concern to him. “Sounds like they’re back now.”

“And you’re not going to drop that mountain of diabetes in the making to go find him, so the two of you can traumatize a credenza or get curtain-burn in unlikely places?”

“I’m not―” Barry tried, then shoved the rest of the toast in his mouth to give himself a second to think. A crackle of electricity later, he was gone and back so fast Vic just barely saw him move, even with his enhanced visual acuity. Barry said, “Just wanted to check. He’s fine. Covered in blue goo and bleeding a little, but fine.”

Vic smiled wanly. “And Bruce?”

“Oh, uh,” Barry said, and then flickered again. “Yeah he’s fine too. A little less fine than Arthur though, and in so many way. I mean like, _fine_ ―”

“Yeah I get it, Barry,” Vic said. “Arthur’s _fine_. So why are you back here instead of uh— You know? Not that I’m complaining about this rare show of restraint. Just perplexed.”

“I’m being careful with my assumptions,” Barry told him. The WikiHow page on how to figure out if someone likes you was clear on that. ‘You can use your observations as predictive tools, but you can only figure out so much from clues.’ Pretty standard investigative procedure, but Barry wasn’t going to discount any useful advice on the grounds that it was unoriginal.

Vic looked at him like he was crazy. “Your assumptions,” he echoed.

“Yeah, you know, I’m giving him some space,” Barry said, wrinkling his nose as though the very idea was distasteful to him. Which it was. “I don’t want to keep following him around like a creep who can’t take a hint, in case he’s not interested.”

“Not―” Vic started, then had to stop to take a deep calming breath. “Barry, he’s been banging you so hard that everyone within a half-mile radius of you two is constantly high on second-hand oxytocin.”

“That doesn’t mean that he―”

“Hey,” Arthur said from the doorway, making them both jump just a little. “I’m gonna need some help figuring out how to get corrosive alien blood out of the Batmobile controls. And some help scrubbing it out of my own, uh, controls. Any volunteers?”

Vic raised a hand. “I’ll take option A. Sexy acid baths aren’t my thing.”

“Who said anything about sexy?” Arthur asked, scratching at himself and wincing. “This shit really burns.”

“Love finds a way,” Vic said, and caught a glimpse of Barry turning a bright, mortified red before he walked out of the kitchen.

***

In the near pitch-black darkness of a Vietnamese supermarket snack aisle at 2 a.m., Arthur turned to Vic and said, “You know, I like fish, but this is too much fish. Fish noodles, fish chips, fish crackers, fish, fish, fish.”

The two of them were in Southeast Asia, tracking a yacht Bruce thought had something to do with Lex Luthor, and the late-night grocery shopping (shoplifting, really) had become standard – they find a place that’s closed for business, Vic knocks out the lights and cameras, and they fill their backpacks with a random selection of over-packaged junk. The whole thing was a waste of time as far as Vic was concerned. He tried telling Bruce that a yacht was very easy to track with borrowed access to surveillance satellites, but Bruce insisted he could use more experience ‘in the field’. So far the only experience Vic had gotten was with a dizzying array of international snack foods, and with blocking out Arthur’s snoring every night.

“How the hell does a purple potato happen?” Arthur asked, glaring down at a pack of chips. “Don’t eat this one, ok? I’m gonna bring it back for Barry. Fucking purple potatoes, man. Wild.”

“You’re the superpowered prince of the oceans, wielding a magical trident, and purple potatoes are what’s wild?” Vic asked, then added, “But speaking of Barry, why didn’t you say anything to him about us leaving for this snack-finding mission?”

Arthur shrugged. “Figured you’d tell him.”

“I did, this time,” Vic said, “but you didn’t say anything last time, either. Or the time before that. All he got was a ‘be good while mommy’s gone’ video message from Bruce.”

“What does it matter?” Arthur asked. “I’m gone for a few days – so what?”

Vic put the package of dehydrated chili-flavoured prawn he’d been holding back on the shelf. It was dark in the supermarket, but he had night vision on and he knew that Arthur could see just fine with very little light. For a long, tense moment they just looked at each other, Vic waiting for some glimmer of understanding on Arthur’s part, and Arthur frowning at Vic without showing any sign of said understanding.

Finally, Vic sighed and asked, “Were you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like―” Vic waved his hand in Arthur’s general direction. “Like this. Strong. Did you always have your powers?”

“Well yeah,” Arthur said. “I got Atlantean blood in me, but it’s not like I was flipping cars in my diapers.”

“I get that. So you grew up with this. Me though, I just got these powers a little while back,” Vic told him, bringing his hands up to examine the dull shine of the metal in the dark. “It was a lot to get used to, you know? Took a long time just to be able to pick up a glass without shattering it, because I didn’t know my own strength. I had to learn how to be careful all over again, like a kid, because when you’re strong and you’ve got power over the world, power over someone, you have to watch what you’re doing so you don’t end up hurting them. You get what I’m saying?”

“Not really, man, no.”

“I’m talking about Barry,” Vic clarified.

“I don’t hurt Barry,” Arthur growled. “Not unless he asks me to, and even then―”

Vic held up a silencing hand. “Nope, not what I meant.”

“Then what―”

“His _feelings_ , Arthur, you’re hurting his _feelings_. Jesus, how are you always ready with one more fun fact about your sex life that I didn’t need to know? Doesn’t matter – look, all I’m trying to say here is that maybe what you two have is great, you’re both clearly enjoying it, but if you’re not just in it for the fucking then you might want to pay a little more attention to him outside of naked time, because I’m pretty sure he’s got it bad for you. Like, real bad.”

“He does? Since when?”

Victor shouldered his overfull backpack with a crinkling-crunching sound and said, “Why don’t you try asking him?”

***

Arthur tried to find the right time, but then ran out of patience. When was a good time to ask someone if they were in love with you? He had to get Barry alone, but the trouble was that once he did get Barry alone he tended to forget about pretty much anything other than getting naked and then getting off. Vic was right, though. They had to talk about it - now that he knew to look for it, Arthur saw infatuation written loud and clear where he hadn't seen it before, and it needed to be addressed.

So that’s how it happened that one evening, while balls-deep in Barry’s ass, Arthur lifted up onto his elbows, looked Barry full in the face, and said, “You know what Vic told me in Vietnam?”

Barry groaned, half because holy shit he was feeling really really good, and half because Arthur brought up his best friend while Barry was working on his second orgasm of the night. It wasn’t right.

“Please don’t talk about Vic while your dick’s inside me,” Barry pleaded, then squeezed his eyes shut and rolled his hips to try to get back into the mood.

Arthur had other plans. He pulled out slow and cruel, making sure Barry felt every sweet second of friction, but he stayed on top of him, his heavy heat pressed flush against Barry’s body. It was almost as good as being fucked, and Barry had faith that the fucking would resume once Arthur said whatever it was that he so clearly wanted to say, so he resigned himself to waiting patiently.

Opening his eyes, Barry found Arthur looking down at him in a strange, piercing way that made him a little giddy. Or scared. Possibly both at once.

Then Arthur said, “Vic told me I’m hurting you.”

Barry frowned. “Not unless I ask you to, and even then―”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, but he didn’t mean that. He meant your _feelings_.”

Barry went still under Arthur’s weight, and he’d been keeping pretty still beforehand so this kind of stillness, to him, was a pretty close approximation of playing dead. Was he even breathing anymore? He couldn’t tell. He only moved to turn his head sideways, to hide his face from Arthur’s scrutiny.

Arthur reached up with callous-rough fingers to grab Barry’s jaw and turn his head to face him again.

“Do you love me or something?” Arthur asked, and Barry wheezed with distress before he could stop himself. Arthur wasn’t letting him off the hook. His hand tightened a little over his jaw. He said, “Barry,” in a low voice, and the filtering mechanism between Barry’s mouth and his brain short-circuited.

“Yeah, I love you or something,” Barry told him in a rush. “Kinda hard not to, with the way you walk around like you own the place and the way you smile with the crinkles around your eyes and the way you flip your hair out of your face in the middle of a fight. And that’s just the G-rated stuff, but then you touch me and it’s like my bones light up from the inside with electric―”

Arthur moved his hand up to cover Barry’s mouth. Barry wished he would move it just a little bit higher to cover his nose and maybe smother him to death before this nightmare scene could unfold any further.

“Yes or no question,” Arthur said, and when Barry nodded he took his hand away.

Barry licked the faint traces of salt left over from Arthur’s palm off his lips, then said, “Yes.”

Arthur’s face turned serious. “I don’t really do love.”

“Yeah, no, I know, don’t worry about it,” Barry jumped in. “I uh, I overheard what you said to Diana, the day we broke The Table, about me being easy but like, in a good way. I’m 100% ok with just being an uncomplicated thing in your life, alright? I don’t need you to―”

This time Arthur covered Barry’s mouth with his own, instead of his hand, to shut him up. Like all his kisses it was wet and hot and kind of dirty, but this particular kiss had something extra in it that Barry couldn’t quite place. Maybe it was a bit slower. Maybe Arthur smiled a little while he kissed him. Maybe the rough sweeps of Arthur’s tongue inside Barry’s mouth were more reassuring than insistent this time. Whatever it was, it plunged Barry right back into his earlier ‘desperate to be fucked’ mood.

When he was done kissing the crap out of Barry, Arthur pulled back, his hand still hovering somewhere over Barry’s jaw, and told him, “I don’t really do love. _But_ – I’m sort of crazy about you, kid. You’re one in a billion, in the best kind of way but also in the weirdest kind, and what’s even weirder is that I’m into all the weird shit you do just as much as I’m into all the rest.”

Barry tried to protest, but Arthur said, “Shut up for a second, I’m trying to be romantic,” so Barry shut up and Arthur went on. “You love me? That’s awesome. I’m into that too, and even if I can’t say it back then at least I can say that I’m good with fucking just you for the foreseeable future, and I can say that I sleep better when you stay the night. Hell, I’ll even try to make sure to let you know that I’m leaving before I go on Bruce’s next super-secret mission. I don’t know if that’s good enough for you, but I don’t want to stop doing what we’re doing. Whatever the fuck it means, right now I want you here, in my bed, and in my life. Okay?”

"Okay," Barry said, smiling up at him. “But I have to tell you, even though I don’t have a whole lot of experience when it comes to being in love or anything, what you just said kinda sounds like you love me too. Just a little, maybe. A tiny bit in love with me.”

“Don’t make me take it back,” Arthur told him, then kissed him again, this time in his usual violating way.

They fucked forever that night, Arthur stopping again and again just on the edge of finishing, until Barry practically begged him, tears in his eyes, to let him come already, _please_. Arthur ignored his constant stream of babbling nonsense and instead of easing up he leaned in to bite, to leave purpling bruises where he held Barry down to keep him from touching himself, from ending it before he was ready for it to end. When, hours later, Arthur took pity on the sweaty, hoarse mess he’d reduced Barry to, the drawn-out spectacle of Barry’s orgasm was so protracted that it was almost painful. Arthur didn’t take his merciless hands off Barry’s twitching body until he was completely wrung out.

“That was pretty much the most awful thing you’ve ever done to me,” Barry told him, lying on his side with his face buried against the slow breathe-in-breathe-out rhythm Arthur’s chest was making. “Can we do it again once my sex-induced paralysis wears off?”

Arthur wrapped a huge arm around him. “Shut up and go to sleep,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Barry told him, smiling in secret. “Cause you sleep better when I stay the night.”

***

Everything was smoke and chaos. Against a fiery backdrop, Arthur landed in the rubble with a heavy thud, then leaned back on his trident for extra leverage and kicked a creep wearing a snake costume square in the face.

He looked ferocious, and wild, and like he was having just about the absolute best damn time of his life.

Barry dodged a blast from the same stupid icicle gun that had shattered his poor tibia a few months back, and in that sped up moment allowed himself a good long look at Arthur, who was growling and grinning and dishing out violence.

Time went back to normal, and before Barry could really think it through, he shouted at Arthur, “I want you to meet my dad!”

Arthur didn’t even stop what he was doing. The snake guy got another face-stomping, and then Arthur shouted back, “Yeah, ok!” and the rest of the fight went by in a blur for Barry because holy crap, Arthur said ‘yeah, ok,’ and he was going to meet his dad.

***

It took them three tries to make it happen.

The first time, it turned out that you can’t bring a flask into a prison, and since the flask belonged to Arthur’s dad he was understandably reluctant to leave it at the sign-in desk. Barry went in alone, and told his dad that Arthur came down with the flu.

The second time, Barry was so nervous that he was practically vibrating in place while they waited in line to put their names down on the visitors list. Arthur rested his hand on the back of Barry’s neck to calm him down, stroking his thumb up into Barry’s hair, when the guy behind them called them faggots and the ensuing altercation landed the three of them in a holding cell. A phone call wasn’t enough that time, and Bruce had to personally show up at the prison to talk the warden into dropping the assault charges. It worked, so Barry and Arthur were free to go, but by then visiting hours were long over.

Third time, was, actually, the charm. It very nearly went south when a guard tried to make Arthur take off his sunglasses, but Barry managed to convince her that he’d just had laser eye surgery the day before and was _excruciatingly_ sensitive to light, so how could she, in good conscience, ask him to part with the one thing that afforded him some modicum of protection from the harsh fluorescent lights in there? She was either the most kind-hearted guard in the whole history of incarceration, or just didn’t give enough of a shit to argue with a kid who shot off incomplete sentences and endearing smiles faster than a semi-automatic assault rifle.

The sunglasses stayed, which was good because Arthur’s eyes definitely gave him away as not quite your average human, though the shades did have the drawback of making him look even more hung over than he very probably was. A good first impression was more than Barry could dare hope for, but maybe Arthur could win his dad over with his infectious laugh or a cool story about— Damn it, never mind. None of his cool stories would clear the stringent restrictions on divulging League info laid out for them prior to the visit by a visibly anxious Bruce.

“This was a bad idea,” Barry muttered once they were seated behind the glass, waiting for his dad to be brought out. “Why did I think this was a thing that should happen? We should go. I changed my mind. No one should ever meet anyone, we should all live our separate lives and be happy that―”

Under the table, Arthur put a hand on Barry’s knee to keep him from bouncing his leg like a restless fourth-grader.

“Stop freaking out,” Arthur said. “Here he comes.”

Yup, here he comes. Deep breath. Big smile. Barry was just enjoying the heck out of this totally normal situation where his Atlantean giant of a boyfriend was meeting his dad, in jail, for the first time ever. Wait, was Arthur his boyfriend?

Barry picked up the receiver attached to the wall, then covered the mouthpiece and whispered furiously to Arthur, “Hey, are you my boyfriend? Am I your boyfriend? Do I tell him we’re boyfriends?”

Arthur didn’t even spare him a sideways glance.

“Shit. Hi dad! How’s it— How’ve you been? This week? And last week, I guess? Sorry we couldn’t make it. Some unevolved bigot at registration gave us a hard time. But it’s fine, it was fine, Arthur and I took care of it.”

Barry’s dad held the receiver closer to his face and leaned in, squinting, to get a better look. “Yeah, I bet you did. Jesus, look at the size of him. Guy named ‘Arthur’ working in a crime lab, guess I assumed some things, and maybe I was expecting more— I don’t know, cardigans? Lots of corduroy and elbow patches? Pass him the phone for a sec, will you?”

Reluctantly, Barry handed the receiver to Arthur. “He wants to talk to you about the absence of corduroy in your wardrobe,” he said. Arthur made an indecipherable sound, then cleared his throat.

“Hey Henry,” he said into the receiver. “How’s it going?”

“It’s— Yeah, it’s good, I’m good. Just— What exactly is it that you do at the crime lab, Arthur?”

“Um,” Arthur said, then looked at Barry, who looked back at him with a ‘just like we practiced’ sort of expression, despite being unsure as to what, exactly, was currently the topic under discussion. “Paperwork,” he finally answered.

Henry stared at him for a second, then said, “Paperwork, well alright. And you two are uh— In a relationship? Dating or what have you?”

“Yup, dating,” Arthur said with a genuine smile that nonetheless managed to look a bit unnerving on him. “I’m pretty sure he just asked if I wanna be his boyfriend right before you came in, so I guess it’s official now.”

Barry snatched the receiver from Arthur’s hand.

“Ok, gotta go now, dad. Sorry for the short visit, and sorry about Arthur. He doesn’t―”

His dad smiled and tapped the glass. “Don’t be sorry, man. You seem happy. And he seems nice, if a bit rough around the edges. Says something about him that he came here with you to meet me, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Barry said in a quiet voice. “Guess it does.”

“But you tell him that I know some guys here on the inside, and if he doesn’t treat you right I’ll―”

“Bye dad!” Barry called out, then hung up as quick as he could manage and dragged Arthur out of there by the sleeve of his ragged sheepskin jacket.

***

 “Aquaman! Aquaman, over here! Aquaman!”

A small crowd of reporters was waiting for them behind the police line that blocked off the entrance to the Maritime Museum, all of them yipping and barking like a bunch of miniature Chihuahuas. Most of the cameras were pointed at the Justice League, but a few still lingered on the middle distance, where an invaluable replica of a Viking ship sat creaking and groaning under its own weight on the singed lawn. The museum itself was missing most of its front wall, and a fair portion of its inside space was on fire.

“Aquaman! Karen Chang, Channel Five – can you comment on whether it was really necessary to punch through the wall of a heritage building and drop a boat on a gorilla?”

“Listen Karen, that wasn’t just any old gorilla. Do I tell you how to do your job? Show up at your newsroom to find fault with your cheap-ass skirt suits? No I don’t. Cause I got manners. So don’t tell me how to do _my_ job, alright?”

Karen glared at him for a moment, then said, “But surely, this much property damage was avoidable?”

“Was it?”

“You mean to tell me there was no other way―”

“Sure there was. There were about a million ways this could’ve gone down. But what I really wanted to do, Karen, was drop a boat on that fucker, on account of him using his telepathic helmet to try to scramble my boyfriend’s brains.”

“Your―”

“Come on Aquaman, leave the nice reporter lady alone,” Barry said while strolling up, still feeling kind of woozy from basically being mind-fucked by an ape. “Wonder Woman wants everyone back on the plane in five.”

Arthur smiled at Barry, then smiled at the reporter and said, “Yeah, my _boyfriend_ , Karen,” before pulling Barry in for a kiss.

Cameras went off, video was rolling, Karen and the rest of the reporters were yelling out follow-up questions that neither Arthur nor Barry cared in the least to address. This went on until Vic flew in and suggested, firmly, his eye maybe glowing just a bit redder and brighter, that everyone should disperse and all stray members of the Justice League report to the jet.

Back aboard the Flying Fox, Vic and Bruce pulled up every bit of footage of Aquaman and the Flash making out that had already hit the internet, both their faces stern.

“You just couldn’t help it, could you?” Bruce accused. “You had to go and make a spectacle of yourself, and drag Barry into it too.” He turned to Diana and Clark and said, “Back me up here, guys. I’m too bruised and tired for the bad cop routine.”

Clark and Diana, however, seemed completely unconcerned. Diana was even smiling a bit, looking from Arthur to Barry and back with a glistening softness in her eyes like she was glad, like she was happy for them.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Arthur said, leaning back in his seat and toeing off his boots. “I’m not exactly great at subtlety, so it was gonna come out anyway, sooner or later. Ha, come out – get it? A little gay joke there to lighten the mood.”

“Actually,” Barry said, “I think I prefer the term ‘queer’. It encompasses the less prescriptive aspects of―”

“Ok, I'm out, see you all back at the Hall,” Vic said and hit the release for the back hatch, diving head first into the turbulence outside.

“Come back, Vic!” Arthur shouted after him. “Tell us more about feelings and shit! I think I’m really starting to get the hang of it!”

The howling wind carried back only a string of expletives.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> \- This is probably it, guys! I've put off working on my Actual Novel long enough. Please please please write more Arthur/Barry before they give them dumb love interests in their solo movies and Ruin Everything Forever.  
> \- I love you all for the kind encouragement you've given me, the beautiful ideas, and copious heart emojis. This was the funnest thing I've written in a long while and 900% of that was thanks to all of you cheering me on. THANK YOU.  
> \- Lastly, here's the WikiHow page for [How to Figure Out if Someone Likes You](https://www.wikihow.com/Figure-Out-if-Someone-Likes-You), cause you don't want to make a fool of yourself in love. The title is from that article. I didn't have any better ideas. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


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